


Rekindled

by fewlmewn



Series: Original Stories [11]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Character Death, F/M, Human Sacrifice, Past Rape/Non-con, Religious Cults, Revenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-23
Updated: 2019-10-23
Packaged: 2020-12-29 01:07:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21146216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fewlmewn/pseuds/fewlmewn
Summary: Eyes are the mirror of the soul.





	Rekindled

**Author's Note:**

> Companion piece to [Born to Die](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17546219)

Stone. It doesn't really catch on fire. It doesn't burn. By the end, inside is a scorched, charred mess, but once you've swept the ashes it's actually much cleaner than before. Sterile.

The cobwebs take almost immediately, eager to singe away. The simple linen robes are like wicks, and once the first layer of skin has been burnt off, what's underneath is basically fuel for the flames.

Fat and oils and hair filling the dungeon with that unmistakable stench of… wrong.

Despite the years, it still feels wrong. Hayna shuts the iron door and watches as it lights up red, yellow, then a faint pulsating white. Then, after long hours, it returns to black and cold metal.

Is it cruel that she has to stay and watch that door, unmoving the both of them, until the cleansing is done with? Perhaps, but it's just another duty, not dissimilar to how strapping the sacrifice to the altar had felt like. By the end, necessary, if unpleasant.

Hayna wasn't used to that sort of duties, she was usually responsible for prayer-making, writing new impassioned, ecstatic verses in a rapture for the others to read. Preparing sacrifices had been Eylor's responsibility and, well, that had ended just about how Hayna expected it to, given the man's… disposition.

Roughing up sacrifices was all right with her, and she could certainly look the other way at the occasional fondling. These untouched women were definitely a sight, clad only in white linens and their hard-fought purity.

Luckily for Hayna, pale breasts and supple buttocks didn't do anything for her, but if she could, she would've spent days carding fingers through their soft locks, twisting hair between her hands, playing with it, smelling the sweet, floral scent of womanhood and the underlying sourness of burgeoning puberty.

But Eylor was indeed one for breasts and hips and the soft flesh of inner thighs.

It's a wonder how he'd been the one appointed to the sacrifices.

Years had gone by without incidents, successful rituals meant the parish was carrying on with their plan without itches. Then, one night, after a particularly bad service - poor girl, her long amber locks had deserved better, how did Hayna wish she could've cut her hair to keep for herself, but alas the sacrifices were to be left alone - Eylor had barged into her chamber.

His chest was heaving, his eyes wide and filled with something like new life, glimmering and feverish.

Pacing the room, he'd gone into great detail about the extent of his molesting. What he'd touched, how much and for how long. Where he'd put his hands and more, and what the sacrifice had said to his violations. She was almost asking for it, he said. Hayna had no doubt that the sacrifice was likely hoping that playing along with whatever Eylor intended to do could've spared her, but that's something that can't have possibly crossed the man's mind, no.

And at the end of his distressing tirade, he said that despite it all, the ritual had gone swimmingly. The priest hadn't noticed anything wrong, and there had been no cause for interruption during the service itself. Considering this, it meant that whatever they were sacrificing women to either didn't exist at all - blasphemy! - or it didn't care. Mind you, since Eylor hadn't actually penetrated the girl nor put his seed in, or on her, he figured that as long as he didn't do either of those things, her purity had been safeguarded, and the sacrifice could be conducted same as ever. Everything else, however…

Hayna felt sick, but she couldn't say what part of Eylor's excited ramblings had made her nauseous. She ended up cautioning Eylor to be careful, to keep what he'd told her to himself, and asking him to leave, before sleeping long and deeply with drying tears on her face.

As it seems, this went on for months, and Hayna couldn't help but notice the pain in the sacrifices' eyes whenever they crossed the dungeons to the ritual chamber.

It wasn't the look of a caged animal, of something doomed. Oddly enough, it was a pained grimace of horror, tinged with the spark of hope. Whatever Eylor was doing to them, they'd rather be burned alive than endure another second of it.

Something about it was wrong, a profanity. How could the sacrifices be pure, still, after all that? Rather than think that something deeply unjust had happened in their church to allow the morals of this go unpunished, Hayna simply denied the reality of it all.

She didn't have to pretend for long, as Eylor's lust eventually came to a head when he ravished the sacrifice, whose screams Hayna is hearing beyond the iron door.

The priest had noticed, though it hadn't been the blood nor the seed staining the sheets in her dungeon cell to alert him. It had been in her eyes. Whatever made her worthy a sacrifice, was gone, and he could see it.

One look at her and he knew what had to be done. The priest had excused himself and summoned Hayna, along with a handful of other acolytes who hadn't even seen the sacrificial chamber yet. Panic was rising in Eylor's eyes, and the sacrifice - no, the woman, for she couldn't be a sacrifice anymore, rest her soul - she just looked tired and unfeeling.

Hayna finished securing her on the altar, and at just about that time did bruises start to blossom on the woman's legs and arms.

The stained gown would've been enough to call off the sacrifice, but in this instance it definitely warranted the blow one of the other attendants gave Eylor, making his face turn and his lip split. The hit distracted him long enough to allow them to seize him and bind him to a pillar.

Soon after, the floor was doused and Hayna received instructions to make sure it was done, and to clean up afterwards.

Hayna's beliefs had been shaken, these past few months, but sweeping the floor sets something in her heart alight. The girl's body is a neat pile of pale ashes, a mound with a faint woodsy smell to it, almost pleasant.

In the corner of the room, Eylor's a husk, burnt to a crisp, blackened and twisted, oozing black tar and bubbling where the charred flesh cracks and splits to reveal the still-red inside. And the corpse is moving. Softly. Breathing laboriously under the weight of bark-like skin and melting organs.

Eylor's corpse's eyes open, and Hayna has never been more glad to move human remains across the dungeon, to a darkened supply closet, once used to store candles, of all things. She doesn't much care how long it will take for it to be over, no one ever visits that side of the church anyway. She reckons that the longer it takes, the better it will be.

She's just happy that her faith's been rekindled.


End file.
